Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District
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The Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District was the title given to the Bishop who headed an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, of the Catholic Church in England, the Vicariate Apostolic of the Northern District, from 1688 to 1840.
Within a short space of time after the accession of Elizabeth I those Catholic Bishops who had not died were deposed and replaced in their sees by Protestant appointees. Most of the deposed Bishops were imprisoned in various locations and died in captivity over a period of years. The last to die was Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St Asaph, in Rome on April 3, 1585. In 1623 after a century and a half the Pope, Urban VIII decided once again to appoint a Catholic Bishop with jurisdiction in England.
So it was that Dr William Bishop was given the title of Vicar Apostolic of England. He died shortly afterwards and was succeeded by Dr Richard Smith, who in August 1631 forced to resign and flee to France. The office was revived with the appointment in 1685 of another bishop in the person of Dr John Leyburn.
The first Vicar Apostolic, Dr Bishop, had in 1623 divided the country into six areas, at the head of each of which he placed a superior with the title of vicar general and this had remained the system thereafter. Dr Leyburn then reduced these to four. It was on the basis of these four areas that in the heady days of early 1688 the number of bishops in England was multiplied by the Pope on January 20 to a total of four Vicars Apostolic and the territory of the former single Vicariate Apostolic was restricted, being centred still on London, with the title Vicariate Apostolic of the London District. So it was that a Vicariate Apostolic of the Northern District was created. The first Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District from January 30, 1688 was Bishop James Smith, who died in 1711. He was succeeded only in 1716, by Bishop George Witham, till then Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District.
Notwithstanding intermittent persecution, a Vicariate Apostolic of the Northern District continued in existence until 1850. The last Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District was Bishop William Hogarth, who on September 30 1850 was assigned the title of Bishop of Hexham in consequence of the fact that on the previous day, 29 September 1850 Pope Pius IX issued the Bull Universalis Ecclesiae, by which thirteen new dioceses were created, among them the diocese of Hexham, a new jurisdiction to replace formally the old Vicariate. The diocese of Hexham in 1861 was renamed diocese of Hexham and Newcastle and its head took the title Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, which has remained until the present day.
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